Criminalizing abortion?

In the post immediately below, I responded to some aspects of Ampersand's post about pro-lifers and feminism. I didn't get a chance to get to what may have been the most difficult part of his post, the aspect with which I have wrestled a great deal: can a pro-life feminist advocate the criminalization of abortion?

Ampersand writes:

Hugo asks, why not embrace both the supply and demand-side methods of reducing abortion, rather than making a choice? Hugo's position only makes sense if he believes that banning abortion would harm nobody to any significant degree. And if you accept that premise, then Hugo is correct: It makes perfect sense to ban abortion if the ban harms no one and might do some good by preventing some abortions (even if the number of abortions prevented is low).

But how could anyone think that banning abortion does no harm?

It's clear that banning abortion would do harm. Some women (and their doctors) will have to be thrown in prison to enforce such a law. Some women (most likely poor women) will be hurt or killed by botched illegal abortions. Some working- and middle-class women will be forced to spend their life savings getting a safe, legal abortion in another country. And some women will be forced to give birth against their will, giving up control of their fertility (not just whether or not to have children, but also how many children to have and when in their mother's life plans they'll be born) and often being forced to give up life dreams and career plans. All women will have less freedom than before.

There is a substantial price to pay for banning abortion. And even if we accept -for the sake of argument - that reducing abortion is a noble and important goal, all the evidence indicates that banning abortion is a very ineffective way of reducing abortion.

I think this is a bit of a false choice. I can only support a ban if it hurts no one? All restrictions on abortion hurt someone; some women are no doubt discomfited by the lack of availability of third-trimester terminations.

First of all, where is the evidence that if abortion is made illegal, women will be hurt or killed by botched abortions? I'm not saying it won't happen, but since Ampersand is a stickler for evidence, I'm curious as to where the statistics are to back up these various claims. Arguments from America's past are not in and of themselves sufficient predictors of the future, as much as it pains me as an historian to say that! What about the possibility that a dramatic reduction in access to abortion will result in more women keeping their babies? Especially if -- as leftist pro-lifers insist -- anti -abortion legislation be accompanied by considerable aid to help single (and married) women either afford to keep their children or give them up for adoption.

But the best reason to support a ban is the conviction that abortion is the destruction of innocent, vulnerable human life. The fact that murders occur despite the fact that homicide is illegal is a poor argument for legalizing homicide. Closer to the point, the fact that men have always paid women to have sex with them is a poor argument for legalizing prostitution. Laws exist to protect the vulnerable regardless of the difficulty of enforcing them.

We are at an impasse here, albeit one we can discuss politely. If one believes -- as almost all pro-lifers do -- that life begins at conception, and the life of a child at one week or three months or three years is equally valuable, than one would be hard-pressed to justify not working to overturn the law that made the killing of any of those children possible. If one believes that an embryo in these early stages is just a mass of cells that is merely a potential life, than restrictions on abortion are an absurd and unwarranted intrusion into a woman's privacy. But I'm at a loss as to how it is that I can be expected to continue to believe that abortion is murder while still insisting that it remain legal. As a strategy, pro-choicers will be better off trying to convince folks like me that an embryo is not deserving of personhood. And that will be an uphill battle, just as it is for me when I engage in dialogue with folks on the other side of the issue.

I don't think that the primary focus of a pro-life strategy should be the criminalization of abortion. I'm interested in changing hearts and minds and behaviors. I'm interested in voluntary rather than forced conversions. And frankly, criminalizing abortion outside the context of a massive cultural change in attitudes towards life isn't going to work to end the practice. I don't write or lobby legislators to enact more abortion restrictions, though I support such restrictions. I'd rather give money to campaigns to change hearts and minds, campaigns like those of Feminists for Life. Yes, that means I will make common cause with Christian right-wingers with whom I share a faith and a common language, but whose troglodytic politics annoy the heck out of me on other issues. So too, I will make common cause with secular left-wing feminists on issues ranging from domestic violence to pay equity to war to Title IX to welfare.

I think I've infuriated everyone now. Yikes.

Of course, organizations like Consistent Life get "all the issues right". But those of us who support the "seamless garment" philosophy of life are so numerically insignificant as to be irrelevant -- unless we make common cause with both left and right on an issue-by-issue basis.

This is a hard issue for me to write about. As it does for many people, writing about abortion brings up intense emotion. As I've written before, I spent years on the pro-choice side, giving my time and energy to pro-choice causes. I have enormous respect for the goodness and sincerity of folks on the other side of this issue. If I had not "come to Christ", as it were, my views on abortion would surely be where they were a decade ago. But my politics are built on my theology, as inadequate as both no doubt are, not the other way around.

Comments

[obeah]

"If I had not "come to Christ", as it were, my views on abortion would surely be where they were a decade ago."

May I ask why? As an atheist pro-lifer, I am often puzzled (and mildly disturbed) by statements like this.

[Hugo]

obeah --

I don't mean to imply that a religious conversion is required for a pro-life stance. Indeed, I am engaging in full disclosure -- as one who advocates changing hearts and minds, I am sharing how my own heart and mind was changed on this issue.

Christian theology has a long history on the issue of when life begins, and it takes too long to recount here -- suffice it to say, the mainstream/orthodox position (informed by science) has become conception.

[obeah]

My question isn't about Christian theology, though; it's about you. I guess I'm wondering why you did not find the secular arguments for the humanity and value of the unborn persuasive (and, from the sound of it, never could have found them persuasive).

I hope this does not sound hostile, as it's not meant that way at all. I just worry that we're fighting a more uphill battle than I realize, if the only way for many people to come to the conclusion that all human beings should be valued and protected is to undergo a religious conversion.

[Jonathan Dresner]

"But I'm at a loss as to how it is that I can be expected to continue to believe that abortion is murder while still insisting that it remain legal."

A thought, Hugo. It is possible to argue that abortion is indeed killing without believing that abortion is murder. I understand that, as a pacifist, you have a problem with this argument anyway, but there is a long religious and legal tradition of 'justifiable homicide' which balances the inherent humanity and activity of the deceased against the humanity and needs of the killer. This isn't an easy application to abortion, but it is an avenue of argument that does occupy some of the middle ground.

[Hugo]

Obeah:

I found the civil rights argument (used by Nat Hentoff) compelling -- but not enough to change my mind. As a pro-feminist,if you will, any violation of a woman's autonomy seemed unthinkable to me; no secular argument was sufficient to undermine it. But that's just me. I don't think that social policy ought to be made on the basis of theology alone, of course; secular arguments against abortion will play a critical role in the struggle for hearts and mind.

Jonathan -- thank you for the nuance between killing and murder. I'm quite happy with permitting abortion to save the mother's life. There, a self-defense argument holds. The only need that trumps a right to life is another's right to life in the very literal sense of physical survival.

[yami]

"But I'm at a loss as to how it is that I can be expected to continue to believe that abortion is murder while still insisting that it remain legal."

Another thought, and hopefully a complement to Jonathan's, is the case of a father whose child needs a bone marrow transplant. Giving marrow to your child, if you're able, is generally seen as a very serious moral obligation, and it's every bit as much of a life-and-death situation as abortion - should it be legally mandated? What about giving marrow to those whose lives we didn't help to create?

I do think it's possible to argue that one's legal right to make decisions about one's own body should take precedence over another's right to life at your expense, even if those decisions are immoral - the legal system isn't always the best judge of morality. Again, it's not an easy application to abortion. But, since I've given up on drawing a definitive line between "human" and "potentially human" it's a line of thought I'm very interested in. So I thought I'd bring it up ;)

[Linnet]

Actually, it is possible to argue for abortion rights without saying that the fetus is "just a clump of cells." I think a second-trimester fetus is much more than a clump of cells, but the woman's body is her own, and she's under no obligation to allow the fetus to use it as a life-support system. I do not agree that the government has the right to protect the right to life at all costs, even if it means trampling over other basic rights.

[Linnet]

I just read your "mea culpa" and I appreciate your desire to stay respectful about this--so just understand that my previous post was not intended to start a heated debate again, but rather to summarize a position.

[mythago]

I'm quite happy with permitting abortion to save the mother's life. There, a self-defense argument holds

If a mother and her six-year-old fall out of a boat, and the six-year-old is clinging to the only life jacket, the mother commits murder if she shoves the kid off the life jacket to take it for herself--even though it's the only way to save her own life.

If you truly believe a fetus is a human life, there really is no exception.

[Lynn Gazis-Sax]

But how could she save her pregnancy and die herself? If there isn't a viable-outside-the-womb baby yet, the baby is going to die anyway, along with the mother. If there is a viable-outside-the-womb baby, presumably the mother would want an early delivery (whether by induction or by C-section) rather than an abortion. Pace really freak unusual occurrences like what happened with Gianna Beretta Molla, the normal case has got to be that either the pregnancy is advanced enough that you can deliver early, or the baby wouldn't survive the mother anyway. Certainly in the life-threatening pregnancies in my own family (tubal pregnancies) there was no hope of a live baby.

Just to be clear, I do realize that mythago is challenging the idea that a fetus can be treated as a full human life, rather than arguing that women with life-threatening pregnancies should die for their children.

[mythago]

In most cases, you're quite right--there's not going to be a situation where the fetus would survive the mother's death. But it's certainly been attempted; recall the case of A.C., the terminally-ill woman forced to undergo a C-section (despite the risk to her) to 'save her baby.'